Relay for personal interpreter

ABSTRACT

A relay is described to facilitate communication through the telephone system between hearing users and users who need or desire assistance in understanding voice communications. To overcome the speed limitations inherent in typing, the call assistant at the relay does not type most words but, instead, re-voices the words spoken by the hearing user into a computer operating a voice recognition software package trained to the voice of that call assistant. The text stream created by the computer and the voice of the hearing user are both sent to the assisted user so that the assisted user can be supplied with a visual text stream to supplement the voice communications. A time delay in the transmission of the voice of the hearing user through the relay is of assistance to the assisted user in comprehending the communications session.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 10/619,040,filed Jul. 14, 2003, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,006,604, which is acontinuation of application Ser. No. 09/783,679, filed Feb. 14, 2001,now U.S. Pat. No. 6,594,346, which is a continuation-in-part ofapplication Ser. No. 09/288,420, filed Apr. 8, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No.6,233,314, which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 08/925,558,filed Sep. 8, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,909,482.

STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT

Not applicable.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to the general field of telephonecommunications. In more particular, the invention relates to systems toassist telephone communications by those persons who are deaf, hard ofhearing, or otherwise have impaired hearing capability.

Most modern human communications in both social and businessenvironments takes place through sound communications. Yet within modernsociety there are many persons who have attenuated hearing capability.To assist those persons in making use of our telephonic communicationsystem built for the hearing majority, there has been developed a systemof telephone communication which has been principally used by the deafcommunity. That system makes use of a category of device known variouslyas a telecommunication device for the deaf (TDD), text telephone (TT) orteletype (TTY). Current TDDs are electronic devices consisting of a keyboard and a display as well as a specific type of modem, to acousticallyor directly couple to the telephone line. Modem TDDs permit the user totype characters into their keyboard, with the character strings thenencoded and transmitted over the telephone line to be displayed on thedisplay of a communicating or remote TDD device.

Most TDD communication is conducted in an idiosyncratic code specific tothe community of TDD users. This code, known as Baudot, evolvedhistorically at a time when many telecommunication devices for the deafwere based on mechanical or electromechanical devices rather than thecurrent technology based on digital electronic components. Accordingly,the Baudot protocol was constructed for a set of constraints which areno longer relevant to present date devices. The original Baudot protocolwas a unidirectional or simplex system of communication conducted at45.5 Baud. The conventional Baudot character set was a character setconsisting of 5 bit characters and the system encodes the bits of thosecharacters in a two-tonal system based on carrier tones of 1400 and 1800Hertz.

The system of TDD communications is widely used and in fact has becomeindispensable to the deaf community throughout the industrialized world.Deaf persons extensively communicate with their neighbors and with otherdeaf and hearing people remotely, using the TDD system. In addition,systems have been developed to facilitate the exchange of communicationbetween the deaf community and hearing users who do not have access toor utilize a TDD device. In the United States, telephone companies haveset up a service referred to as a “relay.” A relay, as the term is usedherein, refers to a system of voice to TDD communication in which anoperator, referred to as a “call assistant,” serves as a humanintermediary between a hearing user and a deaf person. Normally the callassistant wears a headset that communicates by voice with the hearinguser and also has access to a TDD device which can communicate to thedeaf user using a TDD appropriate protocol. In normal relay operationsin the prior art, the call assistant types at a TDD keyboard the wordswhich are voiced to her by the hearing user and then voices to thehearing user the words that the call assistant sees upon the display ofhis or her TDD. The call assistant serves, in essence, as aninterpreting intermediary between the deaf person and the hearing personto translate from voice to digital electronic forms of communication.

A limitation in the effectiveness of current relay protocols is thenecessity for the call assistant simply to type what is said. Typicalcall assistants can usually type reasonably well, typically in the rangeof 40 to 60 words per minute. While systems exist which permit thedigital encoding of verbal communications at a faster rate, such ascourt stenography used in the legal system, such systems requireextensive special training and are impractical for the numerous callassistants required by the relay systems in operation today. Thislimitation on the speed of conversion from speech to digitalcommunications hampers the effective flow of communication in a relaycall between the hearing person and a deaf person, since most hearingpeople speak at a rate which is higher than most call assistants cantype. In addition, since conventional Baudot communications isunidirectional, the flow of conversation in a relay assistedcommunication session can be somewhat awkward. For example, first thehearing person must voice a statement or question. Then the callingassistant must type that statement or question, which is thentransmitted at Baudot speeds, which are slower than normal human voicecommunication, to the deaf person. The deaf person waits until theentire statement or question is transmitted to him or her, after whichhe or she composes a response and types it in at his or her TDD. Thenthe communication flows backward to the call assistant who must voice tothe hearing person what the deaf person has typed at his or herterminal. This process enables a degree of two-way communication betweena deaf person and a hearing person, but the system tries the patience ofthe hearing person, since it is typically not conducted at a paceanywhere close to normal human communications.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is summarized in that a relay system to facilitatethe translation of information and communication between deaf andhearing persons includes a call assistant who re-voices the words of thehearing person which are spoken to the call assistant. The words spokenby the call assistant are recognized by a speech recognition computerprogram which has been trained to the voice pattern of the callassistant, such that the words are promptly translated into text andformatted into a high speed digital communication protocol. That highspeed digital communication message is then transmitted electronicallypromptly by telephone to a visual display accessible to the deaf person.

It is an advantage of the invention described herein that the callassistant does not have to type most, if any, of the words spoken by thehearing person in the communication session so that the overall speed ofcommunications from the hearing person to the deaf person isdramatically increased.

It is an object of the present invention that the design and utilizationof a relay operated in accordance with the protocols described hereinpermits the introduction of small hand-held personal interpreter whichwill enable on the spot communications between deaf persons and hearingpersons wherever the deaf persons might go.

Other objects, advantages and features of the present invention willbecome apparent from the following specification when taken inconjunction with the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram of a re-voicing relay.

FIG. 2 is an exterior view of a personal interpreter enabled by therelay of FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 is a schematic block diagram of the personal interpreter of FIG.2.

FIG. 4 illustrates the operation of a captioned telephone servicesupported by a relay.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The present invention involves developments in the improvement ofcomputer assisted relay services. These developments are based uponusing voice recognition software, operated by a call assistant (a “CA”),to assist in the voice to text translation inherent in providing relayservices. The CA re-voices the words spoken by a hearing user, with thevoice recognition software translating the voice into text, so that nearto simultaneous voice and text of the voice can be delivered to anassisted user.

The re-voicing relay has its first implementation in providing voice totext transcription services for the deaf. However, the relay voice totext transcription service has use for users other than those who aredeaf. It is envisioned that there are a number of hearing or partiallyhearing users who would have reason to benefit from voice to texttranscription services. For example, a device known as a captionedtelephone, described below, permits telephone users who have hearingdifficulty in use of the telephone by providing a near-simultaneous texttranscription of telephone conversations, the text being provided by arelay. Relay voice to text service might also be useful for anyapplication in which it is desired to supplement voice communications bya text transcription of the voice spoken on the telephone. Thus, whilethe operation of the relay will sometimes be described here by referringto an “assisted user,” who may be deaf or hard of hearing, but who alsomay be a normally hearing person who simply wants text assistance forsome reason. The user at the other end of the line will be referred tohere as the hearing user, simply for the purpose of having something tocall that person, even though both users may be hearing.

Introduction to Re-voicing Relay.

The computer-assisted relay system is intended to provide moreconversation-like performance of voice to text interpreting fortranslating between an assisted user and a hearing user. The method ofoperating the relay described herein is applicable to the broad TDDcommunity, and also to all the applications in which a relay might benormally used. However, since the advantages of this system are mostclear in view of its usefulness in enabling the advent of the trulyportable personal interpreter for the deaf, a diversion to discuss whatthis device is and how the relay may enable its practical use isappropriate here.

Personal Interpreter.

Shown in FIG. 2 is an illustration of what a personal interpreter 10 canlook like. This would be a small hand held device typically the size ofa small hardbound book. It would have a keyboard of minimal size, butuseable by a deaf person who can type. It would have a multi-linedisplay, but the display could be any size that conveniently fits in thecase of the device. The device would also have a key or switch whichwould initiate its operation.

Shown in FIG. 3 is a schematic block diagram of the internal mechanicsof the personal interpreter. The personal interpreter keyboard shown at12 and its display as shown at 14. Inside the interpreter itself is amicroprocessor shown at 16. Not shown, but included within the personalinterpreter, would be the appropriate memory and interface devices so asto allow the microprocessor to be programmed and to operate the personalinterpreter and perform its functions, in a manner well known in theart. Also inside of the personal interpreter is a modem 18. The modem 18is preferably a modem specifically designed for interface with the deaftelecommunications system. Most telecommunications with the deafcommunity are conducted using a Baudot type code. It is preferred thatthe mode be designed to use the enhanced form of Baudot communicationknown as “Turbo Code” (Ultratec), which is generally described in U.S.Pat. Nos. 5,432,837, 5,517,548, and 5,327,479, the disclosure of whichis hereby incorporated by reference. It is even more preferred that themodem use a new variant of Turbo Code, one which uses higher carrierfrequencies (in the range of 3000-3500 hertz) and a faster baud rate(over 100 baud). The output of the modem is preferably wired to acellular telephone 20 included within the case of the personalinterpreter 10. The cellular telephone 20 has a suitable antennaprovided on it so that it may dial a cellular telephone network by radiofrequency communications of the type normally conducted by cellulartelephones. The personal interpreter also includes jack 28 to connect toa conventional wired or land-line telephone line as well. The personalinterpreter also include a microphone 22 and a speaker 24. A filter 26connects the speaker 24 and the microphone 22 to the telephone 20.

A brief description of the operation and functionality of the personalinterpreter reveals the dramatic improvement and convenience andportability that this device gives to deaf people. A deaf user could gointo an establishment, be it a government office or retail facility, inwhich there are only hearing persons. The deaf person would carry withhim or her the personal interpreter 10. The deaf person would then placethe personal interpreter 10 upon a counter or other surface, open it up,and press the initiation key or start button. The microprocessor 16 andmodem 18 of the personal interpreter then power up and act in many wayslike a normal TDD device operating in telecommunication standard, suchas Turbo code. However, there is one critical difference. The start orinitiation key further causes the microprocessor 16 of the personalinterpreter to dial a relay to set up a relay communication session andincludes in its communication with the relay a message, using theenhanced command features available in advanced telecommunicationprotocols, such as Turbo Code, to initiate a special format of relaycall adapted for the personal interpreter. Other codes which permitcommand functions, such as ASCII or CC ITT, could also be used. Thefirst operation is to activate the cellular telephone and direct thecellular telephone to dial the number of a relay operating in accordancewith the method of the present invention. The cellular telephone dialsthe relay. Obviously, no wired connection is required to allow thecellular telephone function to establish a telephone connection with theremote relay, but alternatively the jack 28 to a conventional telephoneline could be used. In addition, when the relay answers the telephoneconnection, the microprocessor 16 of the personal interpreter 10 isinstructed to provide command codes to the remote relay. These commandcodes, a feature possible through the use of Turbo Code, permits thepersonal interpreter to tell the relay that this is a personalinterpreter-type relay communication session. All of this can happen inthe time necessary to initiate the cellular call, perhaps two to tenseconds.

Then, the deaf person can use the personal interpreter to translatewords spoken by hearing persons in the presence of the personalinterpreter into visually readable text. This is done by the personalinterpreter 10 through an unseen relay. Words spoken by the hearingpersons in the presence of the personal interpreter 10 are picked up bythe microphone 22. Those words are then transmitted through the cellulartelephone 20 to the remote relay. The relay, operating as will bedescribed below, then immediately transmits back, in enhanced TurboCode, a digital communication stream translating the words that werejust spoken. The words are received by the modem 18, and themicroprocessor 16 in the personal interpreter 10, and it is displayedpromptly upon the display screen 14. If the deaf person can speak, he orshe may then answer the hearing person with a spoken voice, or, the deafperson may alternatively type upon the keyboard 12. If the deaf usertypes on the keyboard 12, the personal interpreter transmits thecommunication by digital communication to the relay. The call assistantat the relay then reads and speaks the words typed by the deaf userwhich are transmitted to the speaker 24 contained in the personalinterpreter into a voice communication which can be understood by thehearing users. The filter 26 filters out the digital communicationfrequencies from the sound generated by the speaker 24. Thus, inessence, the deaf person has a personal interpreter available to him orher at all times of the day or night wherever the deaf person is withinthe range of the cellular telephone system. Also, because the relay ispreferably operating in accordance with the fast translation methodologydescribed below, a very conversation-like feel can occur in thecommunication session between the deaf user and the hearing persons inthe presence of the personal interpreter 10. In order for thiscommunication session to be satisfactory to the hearing users as well asthe deaf person, however, the relay must operate exceedingly rapidly. Itis, in part, to meet the need for the exceeding rapidity of thisconversational style of communication that the relay protocol of thepresent invention has been designed.

Re-Voicing Relay.

Shown in FIG. 1 is a relay intended to provide the voice to textcapability to support the personal interpreter, and which can alsosupport other voice to text services to provide services for assistedusers. FIG. 1 is intended to show, in schematic fashion, how such arelay system can be set up. Shown at 32 is a telephone of a hearingperson. Instead of a telephone of a hearing person, the input could alsobe the microphone of the personal interpreter 10 shown in FIGS. 2 and 3.The telephone of the hearing person 32 is connected through a telephoneline 34 to a voice input buffer 36 at the relay. The telephone line 34can be an actual physical land line, i.e. two pair between thetelephones, or can be a cellular or other over-the-air telephone linkageor can be an internet protocol digital connection. The voice inputbuffer 36 is a simple buffer to ensure temporary capture of the voice inthe event that the call assistant gets behind and needs to buffer ordelay the voice of the hearing person. In any event, the output of theinput voice buffer 36 is provided to a headset 40 where earphones 38produce the sound of the remote speaking person in the ear of the callassistant. The call assistant is wearing the headset 40 and sitting at acomputer 42 capable of communicating in an enhanced Baudotcommunication, such as Turbo Code or whatever other code protocol isbeing used. However, typically the call assistant does not type thewords which the call assistant hears in his or her earphone 38. Instead,the call assistant then speaks the words which he or she hears in theearphones 38 into a microphone 39 in the headset 40. The microphone 39on the headset 40 is connected to transmit the voice of the callassistant to the computer 42 at which the call assistant sits.

The computer 42 has been provided with a voice recognition softwarepackage which can recognize the spoken voice of the call assistant andimmediately translate words spoken in that voice into a digital textcommunication stream. It is a limitation of currently available speechrecognition software that the software must be trained or adapted to aparticular user, before it can accurately transcribe what words the userspeaks. Accordingly, it is envisioned here that the call assistantoperates at a computer terminal which contains a copy of a voicerecognition software package which is specifically trained to the voiceof that particular call assistant. It is also important that the voicerecognition system be capable of transcribing the words of the voice ofthe call assistant at the speed of a normal human communication. It hasbeen found that a recently available commercial voice recognitionpackage from Dragon Systems, known as “Naturally Speaking,” is a voicerecognition software which will accomplish this objective and which willtranslate to digital text spoken words of a user at the normal speeds ofhuman communication in conversation when operating on conventionalmodern personal computers. A voice recognition software system known as“Via Voice” from IBM provides similar functionality.

The computer terminal 42 of the call assistant then translates the textcreated by the voice recognition software to a modem 46 out through atelephone line 48 back to the display 50 located adjacent to theassisted person. The display 50 can be a conventional TDD located at thehome of the remote assisted user, or can be the display 14 of thepersonal interpreter 10, or can be any other display or text capturedevice used by an assisted user.

For reasons that will become apparent, there is also a connection fromthe microphone 39 of the headset 40 of the call assistant to theincoming telephone line 34 through a switch 52. The switch 52 canphysically be an electrical switch located between the microphone 39 andthe telephone lines 34 and the computer 42 or, as an alternative, it canbe a software switch operating in the computer 42 which passes the voiceof the hearing user through to the telephone lines as voice, or not,under conditions which are selected by the call assistant, by choices heor she makes at the keyboard 44 of the computer 42. The switch 52 isfunctionally a single pole double throw switch although, of course, ifthis function is performed by the computer it will be a logical not aphysical switch. In the simplest embodiment, the switch 52 is a simplesingle pole dual throw switch readily accessible to the call assistantwhich passes the voice of the call assistant from the microphone eitherout onto the telephone line 34 or to the computer 42.

It is a further enhancement to the operation of the relay constructed inaccordance with the present invention that the earphones 38 have noiseattenuating capability. Noise canceling earphones are commerciallyavailable today or, for this purpose, the computer 42 can be providedwith noise canceling sound generation software which would create soundtransmitted to the earphone 38 so as to cancel the sounds of the callassistant's own voice. The noise attenuation or cancellation avoidsdistracting the call assistant, since he or she would then be lessdistracted by the words that he or she has spoken, and thus would beless likely to be distracted from the concentration of the task ofre-voicing the sounds of the voice heard in the call assistant's ear.

Similarly, another option which would be advantageous is that thesoftware providing for the creation of the digital text string by voicerecognition be buffered in its output flow to the modem 46. Before thecomputer 42 would pass the data on to the modem 46, the data would firstbe displayed on the computer screen of the computer 42 for review by thecall assistant. The purpose of this option would be to permit the callassistant to use the keyboard to spell or correct hard-to-spell words,or to create corrections of any misinterpretations created by the voicerecognition software, from the words spoken by the call assistant. It isanticipated that if such an option is utilized, it would require fairlyinfrequent use of the keyboard by the call assistant, since frequent usewould clearly slow down the through-put of the communications.

The relay of FIG. 1 can operate with normal TDDs or with a personalinterpreter as shown in FIGS. 2 and 3 and can also be used to supportthe operation of the captioned telephone described below. In eitherevent, the hearing person speaks in the telephone 32 and the words aretransmitted through the telephone line 34 to the voice buffer 36. Thevoice buffer 36, again operating under the control of the callassistant, would buffer the voice signals from the hearing user asneeded for the call assistant to keep up. The call assistant would hearthe voice of the hearing user through the ear piece 38 and then wouldre-voice those same words into the microphone 39. The words that thecall assistant speaks into the microphone 39 would be fed to thecomputer 42 where the voice recognition software, trained to the voiceof the call assistant, would translate those words into a digital textstream. The digital text stream would be turned into a digitalcommunication stream by the modem 46 and passed on the telephone line 48to a display 50 which can be observed by the assisted user. Experiencehas shown that using currently available technology the delay betweenthe time the hearing user speaks into the telephone 32 and the time thewords appear on the display 50 of the assisted user is a modest numberof seconds.

In the reverse, when a non-speaking assisted user types onto his or hertelecommunication device, the digital signals are transmitted to thecomputer 42 which displays them for the call assistant who then voicesthose words into the microphone 39 which words are then transmitted ontothe telephone line 34. Note that the presence of the switch 52 istherefore important in this mode. Since the voice of the call assistantserves two different functions in the operation of this system, thesignal on the call assistant's voice must be switched so that thehearing user 32 only hears the voice for the communications which areintended to be directed to that person. The switch 52 allows for thevoice of the call assistant only to be directed to the hearing person atthe appropriate times.

Note that if the relay of FIG. 1 is used to facilitate a translationbased on a personal interpreter such as that shown in FIGS. 2 and 3,there will be only one telephone line between the personal interpreterand the call assistant. In essence, in a modification of FIG. 1, thetelephone 32 and the display 50 would both be within the personalinterpreter 10. There would be only one telephone line, a cellular link,between the personal interpreter 10 and the call assistant. Thistelephone line may be a virtual, as opposed to physical linkage betweenthe parties, as for example a linkage using internet protocol over theinternet. Note therefore that the voice of the call assistant and thedigital communications created by the computer 42 would then travel onthat same telephone linkage to and from the personal interpreter 10. Itis therefore important for this embodiment that the personal interpreter10 have appropriate filtering (i.e. the filter 26) to filter out thedigital communication carrier frequencies of the digital communicationsprotocol, so that they are not heard by hearing listeners in thepresence of the personal interpreter 10. The telephone line must stillcarry voice signals, however, so that the spoken words articulated bythe call assistant in response to digital instructions from the deafuser can be properly broadcast by the speaker contained within thepersonal interpreter.

The provision for filtering of the digital frequencies can be done inany number of ways with two being the principal preferred methodologies.If Turbo Code communications are conducted at the conventional Baudotfrequencies of 1400 and 1800 Hertz, the personal interpreter 10 could beprovided with notch filters 26 to filter out signals at those particularfrequencies. It has been found that such notch filters still permit thetransmission of audible and understandable human speech, even if theyfilter at those particular frequencies. As an alternative, it ispossible to change the Baudot frequencies to those which are muchhigher, such as frequencies of 3000 to 3500 Hertz. If this alternativeis selected, the personal interpreter 10 is then provided with a lowpass filter which permits low frequency sounds to go to the speaker tobe broadcast into the environment of the personal interpreter, whilehigh frequencies are excluded.

It is also specifically envisioned that the filter of textcommunications signals from the voice signal can be done digitally orlogically rather than by analog filter. For example, it is possible toimplement the modem at site of the assisted user using a digital signalprocessing, or DSP, integrated circuit. Such a DSP chip can beprogrammed to recognize to separate voice signals from textcommunications signals and to pass along only the voice signals to thespeaker at the location of the assisted user. It is also contemplatedthat the telephone linkage between the relay and the assisted user couldbe a digital connection rather than an analog telephone line. Forexample, the linkage between the relay and the assisted user could be adigital wireless linkage or an internet protocol linkage, wired orwireless. In either of these instances, the appropriate protocol callsfor the transmission of packets of digital data, the packets beingmarked to indicate the type of information carried in the packets. Thepackets might contain, for example, voice signals which have beendigitized or might contain simple digital information representing thetext string of a conversation. In the instance of such a digital packettype communication protocol, the filtering out of the digital textinformation could be implemented simply by only converting the packetsmarked as voice back into sound. Packets marked as containing digitalinformation would be used to recover the text information for display tothe assisted user.

Captioned Telephone.

Shown in FIG. 4 is an illustration of how a typical telephone callinvolving a captioned telephone would be set up. The hearing user attelephone 62 communicates through a telephone line 64 with the relay,indicated at 66. The relay, a re-voicing relay, communicates through atelephone line 68 with the assisted user. At the site of the assisteduser is a telephone 70 used by the assisted user and also a captionedtelephone device 72. The telephone 70 is conventional. The captionedtelephone device 72 is constructed to accomplish two objectives. Oneobjective is to filter, or separate, the digital signals carrying thetext information from the voice signal. The other objective is to takethe digital signals and create a visual display of the text informationfor the assisted user. This device is thus intended to assist the userto understand a greater portion of the conversation by providing avisually readable transcription of the text of the telephoneconversation so that the assisted user can read any words that he or shecannot hear properly.

While the utilization of the re-voicing relay is particularly intendedto be helpful for the personal interpreter and captioned telephoneapplications, it is not intended to be limited to those particularapplications. For example, the voice to text capability of there-voicing relay makes the use of such a relay attractive for somebusiness purposes, such as creating a text record of a businessnegotiation or interview session, conducted over or merely in thepresence of a telephone. If the call assistant is a simultaneoustranslator from one spoken language to another, the relay can be used toconduct language translations assisted by text transcriptions. The voicedelay relay can be used to present text nearly simultaneously to voicefor such applications.

In the implementation of a relay providing captioned telephone service,the relay transmits both a digital text message stream and the voice ofthe hearing user over a telephone connection to the station of theassisted user. It is to be understood, however, that a conventionaltelephone single line connection is only one example of a telephonicconnection that can be used in this arrangement. Digital wirelessconnection, or PCS connection, or even internet protocol wired orwireless connection can be used to connect the relay to the assisteduser. The digital or analog nature of the telephonic connection is notcritical, the only criticality being that the connection is capable oftransmitting voice and text simultaneously from the call assistant tothat user.

It is to be understood that the present invention is not limited to theparticular illustrations and embodiments disclosed above, but embracesall such modified forms thereof as come within the scope of thefollowing claims.

1. A relay system using a call assistant for facilitating communicationbetween a hearing user and an assisted user, the system comprising arelay at the location of the call assistant, the relay including apersonal computer with voice recognition software trained to the voiceof the call assistant to translate the words spoken by the callassistant into a digital text stream containing the words spoken by thecall assistant; a captioned telephone device within sight of theassisted user and including a display visible to the assisted user; andcommunication connections between the hearing user and the relay andbetween the assisted user and the relay, the communication connectionsindependently selected from the group consisting of wired telephoneconnection, wireless telephone connection, PCS connection and internetconnection; the system connected such that if the call assistant repeatsthe words spoken by the hearing user, the digital text stream created bythe relay causes the words spoken by the hearing user to appear on thedisplay of the captioned telephone device.
 2. A relay system using acall assistant for facilitating communication between a hearing user andan assisted user, the system comprising a relay at the location of thecall assistant, the relay including a personal computer with voicerecognition software trained to the voice of the call assistant totranslate the words spoken by the call assistant into a digital textstream containing the words spoken by the call assistant; a captionedtelephone device at the location of the assisted user and including adisplay visible to the assisted user; and internet protocol connectionsbetween the hearing user and the relay and between the assisted user andthe relay; the system connected such that if the call assistant repeatsthe words spoken by the hearing user, the digital text stream created bythe relay results in the words spoken by the hearing user appearing astext on the display of the captioned telephone device in the presence ofthe assisted user.